HealBridge works with women and children leaving domestic abuse in Nigeria. Safe shelter, counselling, legal help, and a route back to work.

Contact info

Ikeja, Lagos State, Nigeria +234 802 517 0267 hello@healbridge.org Support line hours: Mon to Fri, 8am to 6pm WAT Emergency: call 112 any time
  • Comments Off on What a shelter is actually like

What a shelter is actually like

Women arrive at shelters with an idea formed from films and leave within days because it was nothing like it. Others avoid them entirely because they imagine something much worse than the reality. This is a plain description of what

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  • Comments Off on New relationships after abuse

New relationships after abuse

Two opposite fears turn up in this conversation, often in the same woman. That she will never trust anybody again, and that she will walk straight into the same thing without seeing it. Neither is inevitable. This is what is

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  • Comments Off on Looking after yourself while you support her

Looking after yourself while you support her

Almost everything written about supporting somebody in an abusive relationship is about her. This is about you, because the most common way support fails is not that the helper did the wrong thing. It is that the helper ran out.

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Men who are abused

This site is written for women, because that is who our programmes are built for and because the overwhelming majority of people we work with are women. Men are also abused, the ones who are get very little, and writing

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  • Comments Off on When he threatens to take the children

When he threatens to take the children

Of everything said to keep a woman in a marriage, this is the one that works. Money can be earned and injuries heal. The prospect of walking out of your own house and never seeing your children again stops almost

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  • Comments Off on Keeping your phone and your messages private

Keeping your phone and your messages private

Phones leak more than most people realise, and the leaks are usually things switched on for convenience years ago and forgotten about. One warning before anything else, and it is the most important paragraph on this page. If he checks

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When she goes back

You helped her leave. You made phone calls, you lent money, you had her in your house, you argued with people on her behalf. And she has gone back. This is the moment most helpers stop. It is also, in

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  • Comments Off on Finding somewhere safe to stay

Finding somewhere safe to stay

Where you sleep tonight is a different problem from where you live next year. Confusing the two is why some women refuse a perfectly good short term option, and why others accept a bad long term one because it was

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Abuse later in life

Almost every domestic abuse service is designed around a woman in her thirties with young children. Women in their sixties and seventies experience abuse too, and they are among the least likely people in Nigeria to tell anybody about it.

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  • Comments Off on Emergency numbers, and who to call for what

Emergency numbers, and who to call for what

Most Nigerian websites on this subject carry a long list of hotlines. A large proportion of those numbers do not answer, and some have not answered for years. A dead number is worse than no number, because it is dialled

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